Ch. 3, Pt. 3: A Split-Brain Paradox

Have you read part 1 and part 2?

“I don’t know how to get back to faith…or if I even want to.” I confessed in my journal. “Right now, logic, science, and math are much more attractive…maybe because they are objective, unfeeling, unable to cause me pain.”

Speaking of science: It’s said that Charles Darwin didn’t want to face the reality and implications of his discoveries in the Galapagos. As a Christian (in a time when the human origin story was overwhelmingly associated with a literal couple in a Garden), he faced the same dilemma many of us do: sometimes the truth can be a little much.

In his book Good without God, Dr. Greg M. Epstein (Humanist chaplain at Harvard) explains:

“…admitting to [Darwin’s] belief in evolution felt to him like ‘confessing a murder’ right up until the publication of On the Origin of the Species when he was 50 years old. Yet he could not help but make his confession — he worked tirelessly day after day in the years leading up to that publication, striving to reveal the truth. As his journals amply indicate, if he had found reliable evidence in favor of a different conclusion, he most certainly would have accepted it.”

“The truth will set you free,” said Jesus according to John.

I wonder if that includes freedom from the stories we’re most comfortable with, the ones we like and would prefer to keep believing. The ones that match our upbringing and knit us into the fabric of our communities. 

If so, this freedom (thanks-to-truth) doesn’t always feel good or worth it. Sometimes we’re just not ready for it. Sometimes it costs too much.

We might glimpse the menacing shape of it off in the distance and choose instead to fold our doubts away, sew our hearts back together in a haphazard fashion, and try to forget what we’ve seen.

Holding the new realities we’ve learned close to the chest, they become our secrets. We settle ourselves back into safety — reputations managed, doubts hidden, relationships smoothed out. Because we know, like Darwin, we must choose between our belonging and our integrity.

We can’t have both.

Facing the Truth

“Sooner or later I will have no choice but to work through these issues” I continued to reason to myself in that fateful journal entry. “Avoiding is not working as a long-term strategy. And I think pretending is pretty ugly and potentially damaging. Time to air the dirty laundry? I don’t want to. …I am scared to ask the questions. …but I have to dig in if I’m going to ever come out the other side.”

With these words, I convinced myself to move my greatest fears from the privacy of my own thoughts to the lined page of my moleskin in harsh black ink (and then let my husband read them).

The last thing I wanted to be was stuck and stagnant. I had to keep moving — even if it meant taking scary steps to face the truth of my doubts.

I decided, if I am to be any kind of Christ-ian at all, I must be an honest one.

I must be free to question. I must be allowed to wake up some days and not believe any of it. I must be allowed to use both hemispheres of my brain: one that is a Jesus-lover and one that is agnostic at best — vacillating between belief and disbelief as I go about my journey.

That is how it must be — how it is — whether anyone likes it. Because that is who I am (perhaps how God created my brain).

Two Wills, One Skull?

In the 1940s, a procedure called a “corpus callosotomy” was invented as a last resort for treating severe epilepsy. This high-risk surgery sliced through the middle of the brain in hopes that the disconnection of the hemispheres would relieve patients of their seizures.

It had mixed results. But these unique case studies gave neuroscientists the opportunity to gain knowledge about what our heads contain — especially how the two sides of our brains work together (or what happens when they can’t).

What they learned is that, while the brain is like a complex network of computers, the right and left sides tend toward differing skill sets. The left drives logic, analysis, decision-making, and verbal skills, while the right drives intuition, imagination, spacial-orientation, and making sense of abstract connections.

To quote Richard Ivry (director of the Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences): “The split work really showed that the two hemispheres are both very competent at most things, but provide us with two different snapshots of the world.”

When functioning together, the left side acts as “the interpreter” for both sides. And with sole access to verbal expression, it literally always has the final say. However, when the two sides are severed from each other, one side does not know what the other is doing, and that’s when things get really interesting! Experiments revealed that the two sides don’t always agree and sometimes wildly contradict each other.

In one experiment, the patient was asked what occupation he wanted to pursue after graduation. He responded that he wanted to be a draftsman (which is similar to an architect — I had to look it up). But, when they asked the right side of his brain the same question, his left hand spelled out “automobile racer” with scrabble tiles. Whaaaa?!?

In another experiment, neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran claims that the right side of the patient’s brain answered questions as a believer, while the left side answered as an atheist!

These and more experiments are detailed in Dr. Michio Kaku’s book The Future of the Mind.

Now, there is some debate over whether the “split” simply disables a person’s perceptual processing OR actually splits the person’s consciousness — creating two wills in one skull. But, either way, I find the results of these experiments utterly fascinating!

And, despite my rudimentary understanding, I think the split-brain serves as an amazing analogy for how faith and skepticism share space — whether we want to acknowledge this paradox or not.

ALL Your Mind

I agree with Proverbs, though, that leaning “on your own understanding” is not necessarily wise. I don’t trust my brain to deliver stone-cold, rational answers. I know my brain seeks to confirm what I already believe and filter out what I don’t want to see. It feels better to my brain to find order in chaos and tell a consistent story than to hold complexity, tension, or nuance. Powered by “motivated reasoning,” my brain is not so good at objectivity. I am a flawed thinker.

In the words of organizational psychologist, Adam Grant (whose book Think Again is a must-read!):

“These biases don’t just prevent us from applying our intelligence. They can actually contort our intelligence into a weapon against the truth.”

But, the admonishment to “trust in the Lord” can also capitalize on these biases — playing into our desires for answers and certainty. “Just have faith” can act as the emotional and spiritual weapon of corrupt religious authorities to manipulate and control — teaching us to ignore inconsistencies or make excuses for them.

The popular consensus of many (flawed thinkers) is no more reliable than my own.

There’s got to be a better way.

Jesus gave his disciples the advice to be “shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves” — what does that mean?

Was he suggesting that wisdom is both skeptical AND open-hearted (referencing the split-brain paradox)?

To be “shrewd” is to have sharp judgment. And a prerequisite for sharp judgment is the awareness of our own flawed assumptions and biases — what we expect and want to believe.

It requires “the ability to think about our thinking” (so says Adam Grant). And this is a skill that takes intentional practice.

“We don’t start with answers or solutions; we lead with questions and puzzles. We don’t preach from intuition; we teach from evidence. We don’t just have healthy skepticism about other people’s arguments; we dare to disagree with our own arguments” (Adam Grant, Think Again).

I think “Loving the Lord your God with ALL YOUR MIND” includes ALL of this.

“ALL your mind” has got to mean both sides of it: both our Jesus-loving AND our agnosticism. Both our hopes and our doubts. Both our learning and our unlearning. Both our curiosity and our scrutiny. Both our tentative “here’s what I discovered”s and our “I don’t know”s. Both knowledge and mystery. Otherwise, why would a Creator give us these brains?!

A Split-Brain Paradox

Within myself, I’m learning to hold both sides of the story.

And — to be perfectly honest — it feels like an advantage.

One side informs the other in clarifying, flexible, unattached ways. I can retain a critical eye (though, still biased, as all humans are). I can relate to more people. I’m getting better at holding the tension between “two different snapshots of the world” — integrating them whenever possible.

And, perhaps most relevant (considering my theological education and pastoral training), I can call out what is broken in current expressions of Christianity — the things many Christ-ians choose not to see. The things that don’t align with the Jesus-Way. I can push back, challenge, ask “why?” and “what if?”

With the “outsiders” in mind. With the “nonbelievers” in mind. With them... as one of them (at least in part).

I can do so with nothing to prove, no one to please, and nothing left to lose.

:: Deep breath ::

I can do so with increasing honesty…

And that’s more than I could say before.